01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, June 25, 2005

The Providence Journal editorial page apparently will print any contributor who bashes teachers unions, no matter how ill-informed.

Thomas Wigand's June 17 essay ("Public-sector lords, Social Security serfs") is a case in point. Wigand displays no understanding of the history of serfdom, is ignorant of professional research on public-sector/private-sector pay differentials, and is naive about how labor markets work. Once one adjusts for occupational differences in the public and private sector, there are no significant differences between average pay in the two sectors.

Pay is higher in the public sector because there are more professional and technical workers in the public sector. To say that "in the private sector, compensation is determined by the free market" is simply wrong. The labor market bears little resemblance to the mythical "free market." Market forces influence wages but so do institutional and sociological forces such as custom, class, race, power, etc.

Going back to Adam Smith, economists have recognized that the labor market is "different" from other markets, chiefly because of the imbalance of power between buyer and seller.

To compare conditions in Rhode Island today to serfdom under the Czars is to take exaggeration to an absurd level. We do need a debate on public-sector pension reform, one that takes full account of the very serious problem of the collapse of our private sector pension system as well as the less serious problems with Social Security.

This debate will improve if The Journal publishes people who know what they are talking about.

RICHARD McINTYRE

Wakefield

The writer is a professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island.